Ed Huntress wrote:
"David Billington" wrote in message
...

Ed Huntress wrote:

wrote in message
...


In misc.survivalism Ed Huntress wrote:



If it takes a 20% rise in gas prices to cause a 0.25% increase in mass
transit ridership, it's going to be a slow process. g
Nevertheless, there are a lot of people trying it out. We'll see
how long
they stick with it.


I think that the ratios will change; I doubt that this is a linear
phenomenon.


Oh, I'm sure you're right. If it is linear, gas prices will have to
average $14.68/gallon to produce a 5% conversion of commuters from
driving to mass transit. d8-)



I also doubt that the price elasticity of gasoline is
infinite, except for those who live in a subdivision off of a highway.
Those folks are screwed. They will pay whatever it costs for necessary
driving, or they will will move, or they will increasingly drive
lightweight econoboxes.


I suspect the lightweight cars in most cases. But many of them won't be
econoboxes.

When I was between the ages of 17 to 25, my heaviest car weighed 1850 lb.
A couple of them, like the aluminum-bodied AC Aceca, were far from being
cheap. But I wish I had a couple of them back.



I expect you do as it's most likely worth quite a bit of money if it still
exists. I met a guy recently that had an AC Ace that he and his brother
had beautifully restored. He didn't know what it was worth but did say
that he paid about £35k for the unrestored car.


AC Aces (or Bristols, actually, as I think the Bristol-engined roadster was
known; my Aceca was actually known as an Aceca-Bristol) are, or were, worth
quite a bit in the US. But the Aceca never had the cachet of the roadster,
and when I checked some years back, they weren't bringing in a lot of money.

Do you have any idea if your old car still survives?.
That's despite the fact that only 50 or 55 of the coupes ever made it to
North America. Like the Lotus Super Seven Mk. IV, which was sold in N.A. in
almost identical numbers, it never caught the imagination of collectors
here. Maybe it's different today. I haven't looked for years.

I'm not up on Lotus 7 marks but a mate has a Caterham 7. I expect
drivers took a test drive and took a look in the rear view mirror, saw a
yank tank and decided it was not a good idea for road use, the AC was
somewhat larger. Even here in the UK I have been backed into while in my
frogeye by 4x4 as the top of the frogeye windscreen was lower than the
4x4 rear window.
When I was 20 I had a reputation for being able to tune and maintain
Bristols, based on my experience with my car. It was a case of "in the land
of the blind, the one-eyed man is king," but I had two or three Ace
roadsters show up in my driveway many Saturday mornings, where we would swap
stories and tune the cars. That was a very complex and interesting engine.
It looked like an OHC design but it was really pushrod, with secondary
bellcrank-type rocker arms and a second set of pushrods running over the top
of the head to the exhaust side. Setting valve clearances was not a simple
task. The engine was designed by BMW.

I've heard many times that the Bristol engine was war spoils so the BMW
reference makes sense. The other engine that springs to mind as being
confused as OHC was the Riley engine used in the Healey Silverstone
IIRC, the cams being mounted high in the engine block but still pushrod.
With reference to

"in the land
of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,"

I have run across that in the UK with regards US V8 engines such as 302 Ford, not very common so few people have good tuning knowledge over here in many cases and if someone knows more than you they are an expert until you realise they are talking bollucks, actually that happens here with European engines also as I have witnessed having seen work done by so called experts, not!.

Don't take that last rant the wrong way I don't mean to criticise you as you seem to have more than enough ability to investigate and analyse to cope with situations like dealing with the Bristol engine.

One other thought on war spoils IIRC the MG XPAG engine had weird fasteners like inch diameters and metric pitch due to machinery from the French Hotchkiss gun factory being used to produce them.


--
Ed Huntress